Hajira Smart Education System

The specific problems we are addressing are closely aligned with SOLVE’s particular interests. According to UNICEF estimates, approximately 2.9 million children of primary school age (6-10 years) do not attend school due to poverty and similar issues. Unfortunately, our education system is affected by several issues. We are focusing on the following specific problems:

1. Inequity in the quality of education: Quality education is the ultimate goal for all students, regardless of their race, color, or background. Unfortunately, inequity in the quality of education is a real issue. There is an extreme communication gap between teachers, students, and guardians/parents. A USAID-funded assessment in the spring of 2018 found that 44 percent of students who finish first grade are unable to read their first word, and 27 percent of third-grade students cannot read with comprehension. 

2. Time-consuming manual processes: The manual attendance and homework processes consume much time and energy, leaving little remaining for actual learning. Calling students by name one by one in class exhausts both students and teachers. Many students, especially during their teenage years, skip classes, wander around, and engage in unsocial behaviors such as drug use. Slowly but steadily, they lose track of their studies, eventually leading to dropping out of school, often without their parents' knowledge before it's too late.

3. Lack of a corruption-free platform with greater clarity for enthusiasts and donors: Most underserved children can't study properly because of a lack of financial means. As a result, they need a platform to be sponsored by those who have the resources and desire to donate to those in need. People aiming to promote a more balanced system for students from all social classes through donations and fundraising often become discouraged upon realizing that the funds they provide are not reaching the intended recipients or addressing their needs. Implementing a more effective system for collecting donations and ensuring their proper distribution could encourage sponsors to step forward. There are often two main problems in this case:

a. Donors can’t be assured that the funds they provide are actually being spent on their targeted children’s education. 

b. Donors cannot track the progress of the child’s education or learning after making a donation. 

4. Extreme lack of resources for learners with disabilities or neurodivergence: Students with disabilities face the worst disadvantage in our country. The current education system is unable to serve all kinds of learners adequately. In Bangladesh, only 9% of children with impairments attend school, compared to 64% of children without disabilities, claims a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report.

5. Harassments in The Educational Environments: Gender discrimination and female harassment are global issues that can significantly impair students' learning capacity. Lack of awareness is a major factor contributing to these issues, which are more prevalent in ‘developing’ or ‘impoverished’ communities. 

Hajira aims to implement a comprehensive solution to enhance the overall education system and environment for all students. However, our primary focus is on enhancing the educational experience for learners affected by poverty, disabilities, and neurodivergence. We are also actively developing innovative features to assist all learners in leveraging modern technology. Thus, our project combines various features to ensure a better learning system for everyone, regardless of social class, race, or age.

Our solutions are the following:

1. Our Device, Mobile App, and Dashboard: Our self-developed IoT machine streamlines classroom processes, allowing students more time to engage with teachers and learn essential skills. This innovation, along with our custom app, and dashboard, facilitates enhanced communication among students, teachers, and guardians, enabling closer monitoring of homework completion and overall academic progress. Along with many others, there are two main positive outcomes of this feature -
a. Parents can instantly receive updates on their children's attendance and safe arrival at school through our app or dashboard. Regular monitoring of their performance encourages parents to become more tech-savvy, supported by our exclusive training sessions. Automated SMS notifications upon a child's arrival at school alleviate parental concerns, fostering a sense of security.
b. Students facing challenges such as illness or displacement can easily access the latest study materials via our app or dashboard. They can seek assistance from teachers and utilize feedback tools to improve their understanding. Parents can remotely monitor their children's performance and progress from the comfort of their homes using our digital platform.

2. Donation and Grants for Poverty-Stricken Students: We have a digital platform for donations and grants aimed at supporting poverty-stricken learners, particularly children. Our system not only facilitates funding collection but also ensures transparent distribution, tracking, and recording of fund utilization.  

3. Special Courses on Robotics for Poor Students: We help all learners, particularly poor students in building fundamental and extensive skills to fit in the present world overwhelmed by advanced technologies like Robotics, Programming, Software Engineering, and AI. 

4. Special Services for Visually Impaired Students: We are currently developing voice-automated features for our self-developed mobile app to aid visually impaired learners, particularly children. Additionally, we are working on pre-made audiobooks tailored to specific syllabus patterns, enabling blind learners to seamlessly engage in learning alongside their peers. Students with injured arms/hands can also utilize this feature for their benefit. 

5. Features for Ensuring Psycho-Social Well-Being: To raise awareness about social issues like racism, bullying, and gender discrimination in educational environments, we are introducing a "Behavioral Survey" and a "Neurodivergence Quiz" as upcoming features.
• Behavioral Survey - This survey will make every student self-aware and be more compassionate towards the fellow learners in any classroom. 
• Neurodivergence Quiz– The Neurodivergence Quiz is a regular knowledge test designed to familiarize students with neurodivergent conditions like ‘autism’, ‘ADHD’, ‘OCD’, ‘Bipolar’, ‘Dyslexia’, ‘PTSD’. By fostering acceptance and understanding, it creates a positive learning atmosphere where students with such conditions receive better treatment and inclusion.

Our solution mainly works to help underserved students who are affected by poverty, are disabled (visually impaired), and learners who are struggling to pace with the presence of modern technology and leveraging it in their learning methods. 

We also focus on building an environment that practices acceptance and inclusiveness to prevent hostility in education platforms. Social issues like bullying, discrimination, and racism victimize students from all over the world till this day. We are working on organizing surveys and other upcoming systems to encourage awareness to prevent social diseases like these. 
How our solution will impact lives:
1. Impacts on the lives of all students in general: Our self-developed IoT machine saves time in class and it helps students to get more time to learn the actual skills from their teachers. As a result, more focus on studying and better results in overall performances for all students is possible now. We also have our self-developed App, website, and other tech tools to ensure stronger communication between students, teachers, and guardians to increase the activities of the students when it comes to their homework completion. The risks of students lagging behind due to lack of information about homework and other important notices no more.
2. Impacts on the lives of disabled learners: Our voice-automated tech will help disabled students to use our App and other tools. Especially, the learners who are visually impaired will get the most benefits out of it. We are also working on the feature to provide class-related audiobooks for blind students which will be extremely helpful for them and accelerate their learning process.
3. Impacts on the lives of poverty-stricken or displaced students: Our donation collection system directly helps students who can not afford to get a good education opportunity. Moreover, our system tracks how the funding is actually getting spent by automated notification directly from the education institution where the student studies. So, the people who donate to a poverty-stricken learner can be assured that their funds are doing what they are supposed to do. 
4. Impacts on the professional lives of the Teachers: As mentioned above, the teachers get more time in class now that they don’t have to manually collect the attendance for each student or assign the homework by writing it manually on the dairies. 
5. Impacts on the Parents/Guardians: Parents can instantly know about their children’s attendance and safe reach to the schools, and monitor the performances on a regular basis virtually through our App/Site. 
6. Impacts on the social-emotional culture: Our unique “behavioral survey” and pop quiz on “neurodivergence” can track and monitor if there is any case of bullying, racism, and other negative social problems in an educational environment.
7. Impacts on people in the current complex world around new technologies: Our exclusive courses on ‘Electronics & Robotics’  help people directly to prepare and be skilled in the current complex world and around new technologies. 

Our team at Hajira is well-positioned to design and execute this project. I, the Founder of this organization have a lifelong work relationship with the most advanced technologies in my country. As a student, I studied all things tech and science. As an embedded system engineer with more than 10 years of experience, I have developed some products for Solshare, Walton-Micro Tech corporation & ERROR Lab. In 2020 I decided to develop a product to make the education system smarter and bridge the learning gaps for the most underserved students. I made a team of 6 engineers to develop an advanced, digital education system. The team of engineers worked very hard to develop this system and in 2022, we have successfully piloted our system in three schools. Today, with 16 renowned schools working with us, with almost 5,000 users, our solution possesses a highly positive review from its consumers.

As a social member in my own community, I have personally experienced the problems in the education system that I have mentioned above. I observed students with absolute merits and great potentials dropping out because of poverty or displacements. I experienced inequality, bias, discrimination, racism towards learners with neurodivergent conditions and disabilities. I still experience the inequality in my community this day. Students that belong to rich families always have access to advanced opportunities for quality education. In my workplace, I see how quality of education creates a huge difference in the position of any job and job opportunities. Even though a poor student may have more potential or talent, they lose it due to the lack of building proper fundamental and extensive skills when they were students. Also, the outdated and traditional teaching methods are never effective enough, especially for younger learners. 

The Team of Co-Founders:
a. The Co-Founder  Shajedul Hoque is an Sr. Backend Developer has more than 7 years of experience in software engineering. 
b. Co-Founder Raton Hosen is an Sr. Frontend Developer also has seven years of experience in the same field. 
c. Co-founder Md Ahsanaul Haque is an Sr. QA Engineer has 12 years of experience in QA and Project Managements. 
d. Co-Founder Shadia Afrin  is a Director of Operations has more than 4 years of experience as a Teacher and a Master’s degree in CSE. 

Other Team members:
a. Anisur Reza is a Senior UI Developer. He have been developing the UI of our mobile App and dashboard.  

b. Salehin Chowdhury is a a Chief Marketing Officer with 16 years of experience in branding local products and services, startup ventures. He has been promoting our product in different social media platforms.

One of our key strengths is the diversity in the team. The founder, co-founder and other team members from this team belong to different social classes and communities. Therefore, we have a direct understanding of the necessity for all inclusive education environment. 

Our project was piloted in 2022 in three schools as an initial attempt. We received highly positive feedback from our clientele. Today, we have almost 5,000 users (from 16 schools) who have provided positive feedback, and the user satisfaction rate is very high. After closely surveying the community's needs and problems, we have been constantly improving, developing, and evolving our projects to align with them. Many of our upcoming features are currently under construction to reach the ultimate goal of making the education system better for everyone across the country. We work relentlessly to increase engagement with our consumers for clearer communication and to increase the number of users so that we can provide our advanced EdTech services to more than 50% of schools and colleges in Bangladesh by 2026. While we focus on working more for poverty-stricken communities and marginalized learners, our project is ever-growing in various dynamics.

Solve's assistance plays a crucial role in enabling us to overcome significant obstacles and further our goal of enhancing ‘education quality for all’ through the utilization of technology. Applying to SOLVE will make a better international networking relationship with the potential partners and community development. This can assist Hajira to grow both in the country and beyond the border of its country. The professional experts of the SOLVE team can help and guide us to refine our business model which will definitely increase Hajira’s growth in all aspects. Also, our project is currently at a growth stage and proper financial resources are one of the most important factors for the expansion of the project. Being selected by SOLVE will solve a lot of problems the project is facing in terms of financial limitations. We need guidance regarding legal matters such as cybersecurity regulations, intellectual property rights, and data privacy. By leveraging SOLVE’s extensive network of experts and organizations, we are seeking an opportunity to acquire legal guidance, assistance, and necessary data that will ensure that our project and works are aligned with the local laws to safeguard the interests of the stakeholders and organizations. We also need assistance in breaking the cultural barriers as ‘tech-deprived’ local communities may refuse to allow our EdTech projects in the system due to their lack of knowledge and progressive mentality about modern technology. The elder community leaders may resist a ‘brand-new’ learning method at the beginning. By partnering with the extensive expert community of SOLVE, we plan to communicate with the right people in a more strategic and effective way to facilitate a stronger outreach of our mission. 

Partnering with SOLVE offers numerous benefits with the key points being as follows:
International Networking: Collaborating with SOLVE establishes valuable international relationships with potential partners and aids in community development, enhancing Hajira's growth both nationally and globally.
Expert Guidance: SOLVE's professional experts can provide invaluable guidance to refine our business model, contributing to Hajira's overall growth and success.
Financial Support: Funding is crucial for our project's expansion, and being selected by SOLVE can alleviate financial limitations, enabling us to scale our impact effectively.
Legal Compliance: We require assistance with legal matters such as cybersecurity regulations, intellectual property rights, and data privacy. Leveraging SOLVE's network, we seek guidance to ensure compliance with local laws, safeguarding stakeholder interests.
Cultural Barriers: Breaking cultural barriers is essential, especially in tech-deprived communities resistant to modern technology. SOLVE's extensive expert community can facilitate strategic communication to overcome these barriers and promote acceptance of our EdTech projects.

Our solution has a holistic approach to solve the underlying problems and improving the quality of the education system for all children irrespective of their social status. However, there are a few particular aspects and features that make our project greatly innovative. 

First and foremost, we have a system for collecting donations to support learners who cannot afford a quality education. We have the technology to track tuition fee status, attendance rate, teacher feedback, and performance, providing donors with clarity about the use of their donated funds. This transparency encourages more people to donate to ensure underserved children receive a better-quality education.

Secondly, we are developing technology for our apps and dashboard features to be voice-automated, enabling visually impaired students to benefit and easily use the apps and software through voice commands. Additionally, we are working on special audiobooks tailored to the needs of blind learners, covering relevant lesson materials.

Our self-developed IoT machine is cheap and works properly even in a very poor network. It saves a lot of time in class, allowing teachers to focus more on actual lessons and interact better with students. This improves the overall delivery and quality of teaching. 

We also prioritize the needs of communities in rural areas. Our digital platforms are designed to be accessible even in the most remote places. Our device is capable of functioning under 2G network coverage. Even people with limited internet access due to poverty can still access our services. Additionally, families without internet access can still receive important notices on their low-cost cell phones via phone SMS. So, everyone is included and can use our services. 

We are providing exclusive tech-related courses (such as electronics and robotics) for underserved students, free of charge. This initiative aims to bridge the equity gap between wealthier students and those affected by poverty or similar challenges.

Finally, one of our most innovative aspects in this project is the development of a feature called the "Behavioral Survey,". The Behavioral Survey serves as a record system to track students' behavioral performance in the classroom and identify instances of bullying. Across different countries, cultures, and communities, bullying is unfortunately a common occurrence in educational settings, often targeting students from middle-class or poverty-stricken families by those from more affluent backgrounds. Such incidents can significantly disrupt the learning environment and even force affected students to leave school. 

 
In addition to the Behavioral Survey, we're also developing a similar tool to raise awareness about "Neurodivergence" in educational settings. This feature includes a "pop quiz" conducted in the classroom, with questions and answers covering general knowledge about what neurodivergence is and its various aspects. This helps create a welcoming, supportive, and healthy learning environment for students with ADHD, OCD, Autism, Bipolar disorder, and other similar conditions.

Our solution stands out for its innovation in several key areas. We harness advanced technology to create cutting-edge tools and platforms that address the diverse needs of learners, particularly those in marginalized communities. 

We analyze demographic data and review feedback and interviews to address the most pressing issues faced by the students, teachers, and guardians to attain a deeper understanding of the community's needs. We then tailor, redesign, and upgrade our features and tools to align with the found issues in our research. One such example is that we are currently working on making all our App features voice automated so that visually impaired students can easily use our tools with simple voice commands as we found this issue as a crucial one. As we constantly reflect on our previous works of ours and the others, we discover what and where we need to improve. 

Our solution is comparatively durable, low cost, and most relevant to our consumers in the local community. It is because our tech tools are self-developed and tailored while keeping in mind that the users of these tools are often from marginalized or poverty-stricken communities. Our project helps underserved students to get donations, vouchers, and study materials. We frequently organize seminars and small training sessions to monitor the ability of our users to understand how and where we need to remodel our projects and products.

The mindset of inclusivity is one of our greatest strengths as an innovative solution. We work for all students but we focus on helping students with ‘autism in general’, ADHD, ASD, visual impairment, and injuries of any sort - by creating awareness and establishing an accepting culture in the educational environment. We strive to raise awareness like “Autism is a condition, not a disease”. Maintaining a balance and providing equally good opportunities to utilize the natural merits every student individually has is our main focus. In a developing country like Bangladesh, we are one of the very first technology-driven education organizations that is working on building an inclusive educational environment for all children. 

We also closely observe the learning outcomes to evaluate the difference in learners’ performances. We have noticed that students from the schools that work with us have achieved higher scores for their term exams and better class engagements on average than before when they didn’t work with us. Students find their school time more fun and exciting now than before their schools collaborated with ‘Hajira Smart Education System’. Teachers are more willing to provide better deliveries because they have a much more stress-free workplace now. 

To conclude, our approach is driven by a deep understanding of the needs of students, teachers, and guardians in our community. Through seminars, training sessions, and ongoing support, we ensure that users can fully utilize our tools for the benefit of education. Moreover, our focus on leveraging technology not only improves communication between parents and schools but also helps bridge the gap for underserved students through donation initiatives.

Our impact goals are: 

1. Improve the quality of education for all the students, especially younger ones
2. Increase digital literacy in this post-pandemic, current tech-driven world
3. Reduce discrimination based on racism, class division, and gender
4. Increase social-emotional well-being 
5. Grow social awareness around neurodivergence and disabilities
6. Ensure equal opportunities for poverty-stricken and displaced learners
7. Help learners, teachers, and parents to practice the mindset of “diversity, equity, and inclusion”
8. Ensure the application of the concept “diversity, equity and inclusion” in our own workplace 

We collect evidence data by studying and analyzing previous research on Edu-tech projects relevant to ours. Our team members continually experiment with the knowledge gained to introduce new development aspects to the project. We focus on implementing changes that enhance the quality of education for all children and manage donations for poverty-stricken students. We have conducted fieldwork to gather information on how the old and traditional teaching methods are proving highly ineffective for children. Moreover, the pandemic has exacerbated the shortcomings of the entire system, putting almost 37 million children in this country at risk with their education (UNICEF, October 19, 2021).

In addition to our research studies, we regularly conduct surveys on a personal and professional level. Our 24/7 customer service system enables us to monitor and record feedback from the consumers of our services and products. We interview parents, teachers, and students to understand the impact our products are having and to bring about positive changes. With every new integration of a new tech tool in our system, we arrange several surveys and learn directly from the users how the new features help them. If there are suggestions for improvement, we record them too, and later use the data for upgrading the features according to the users’ needs and suggestions. Teachers have provided us with positive feedback, offering detailed descriptions of how the implementation of our project solutions has improved the quality of education. Students are more engaged than ever, and guardians have better communication with teachers, making it easier to monitor a child’s performance. As we closely monitor learning outcomes and have found that students in schools collaborating with us achieve higher average scores in term exams and class activities. 

To assess the impacts of our services, we conduct one-on-one consultations with guardians. The feedback indicates that our consumers have experienced a better educational system for their children, unlike anything they've experienced before. Our machine services provide greater accuracy and a sense of safety for their kids. Now, they can monitor their children's progress through smartphones using our app services, eliminating the need to rely solely on term exam results to track their children's academic improvements. The app reports keep parents up to date. With the help of our device, we can quickly and easily assess user performance. We also occasionally interview students, who find the new system more enjoyable and interesting.

The core technology powering our solution encompasses a smart integration of several cutting-edge tools and platforms. At its heart, our solution leverages advanced technologies such as self-developed IoT Device, Dashboard, Mobile App, and voice automation to revolutionize the education sector.

One pivotal component is our low cost IoT-based attendance system, which automates the attendance process in classrooms, saving time for both teachers and students. This system utilizes RFID/NFC cards to record attendance instantly, sending notifications to parents and ensuring the safety of students.

Additionally, our digital donation platform harnesses technology to facilitate transparent and accountable donation processes. Through this platform, donors can track the utilization of their funds in real-time, fostering trust and confidence in the system.

Our mobile applications feature voice-automated functionalities, catering to visually impaired students and enhancing accessibility for all learners. These tools enable smooth communication and interaction between students, teachers, and parents, promoting a collaborative learning environment.

Technologies that we have used in our solution:

1. AWS services (IoT core, ECS, RDS, Amplify, AWS lamda, loabalancer)
2. VCS (git, github, github actions (CI/CD))
3. Database: PostgreSQL
4. NFC/RFID
5. ESP32
6. Amazon FreeRTOS
7. Android and IoS App

Overall, the core technology powering our solution is characterized by its versatility, efficiency, and commitment to leveraging innovation for the betterment of education for all.

Our solution team comprises a total of twelve individuals, with six engineers, one each in production, operation, and marketing roles, and three persons for data entry and other tasks. 

Though we began product development as a team in 2020, we piloted our project in 2022, initially with three schools. The project continues to evolve, aiming to consistently construct solutions for improving the education system in Bangladesh and potentially in other countries in the future. Our users have been using our solution for over two years.

We believe that diversity within a team leads to the best outcomes. A team composed of individuals from various backgrounds understands the needs of different communities more effectively. We ensure diversity in our team by selecting members with diverse backgrounds and experiences. 

This entails: 
• Providing flexible work arrangements to suit diverse schedules and lifestyles.
• Ensuring fair pay for equivalent work and advocating transparency in compensation procedures
• Supplying resources and assistance for professional advancement and career progression.
• Promoting open communication and feedback channels to tackle any DEI-related concerns or problems.

We also have strict guidelines in place to prevent racism, bias, and hostility based on social class, creating a welcoming environment for all team members. We've taken steps to ensure everyone in our team feels welcome and included:
• Offering regular training and meetings on DEI topics to boost awareness.
• Establishing employee resource groups for underrepresented communities.
• Celebrating cultural holidays to build a sense of belonging.
• Broadening our hiring efforts to attract diverse candidates from different backgrounds.

Whether from middle-class, aristocratic, or lower economic backgrounds, we promote awareness and professionalism in our work environment. We prioritize these values from the outset, including them in our hiring processes and providing equal training, resources, and support to all staff members to minimize barriers and maximize opportunities for everyone, both individually and within their communities.

Hajira operates under a Software as a Service (SaaS) business model, which is a cloud-based delivery model where software is hosted on remote servers and accessed by users over the internet. In our case, we provide a comprehensive suite of technology-driven solutions aimed at improving education quality for our customers through a subscription-based service. This model allows educational institutions, organizations, and individuals to access our platform from anywhere with an internet connection, eliminating the need for complex installations or hardware requirements.

Under the SaaS model, we offer a range of subscription plans tailored to the needs and budgets of our customers, providing them with flexibility and scalability. Our platform is continuously updated and improved to ensure that our users have access to the latest features and functionalities. Additionally, the subscription-based nature of our service enables customers to benefit from ongoing support, maintenance, and updates without incurring additional costs.

By leveraging the SaaS business model, we can deliver cost-effective solutions to our customers while also maintaining a sustainable and scalable business model.

To become financially stable, we have a few measures. Since this is a hybrid project (we have both for-profit and non-profit traits as a business project), we earn money through:

1. Product Sales – We sell our self-developed device. Though it’s more durable, lower in cost and more effective compared to other advanced tech devices, we earn by selling the device to educational institutions, mostly schools and colleges. 
2. Annual fee - For the whole, advanced and tech-based system we run in the schools/colleges, we charge an annual fee from the institutions. 
3. Tuition fee payment – We charge only 0.15% service charge for each online tuition fee payment. 
4. Sponsorships – We are expecting sponsorships from a very few renowned organizations. Hopefully, SOLVE will be our very first global sponsor and mentor. 

In conclusion, through a strategic blend of grants, sponsorships, product sales, service contracts, and potential investment capital, we are confident in our ability to secure the necessary resources to sustain and expand Hajira economically.